Thursday, December 02, 2010

Girl-Wonder.org Membership Drive

The old Board of Directors at Girl-wonder.org were a driven, organized, and (rare among comic fans) practical bunch that managed to convince the suits at DC Comics that a third-string sidekick girlfriend of Robin should be returned from grave and given her own solo series. Pretty fucking impressive on it's face, and they had considerably wider goals. Alas (as with my own projects) life gets in the way and you don't always have a successor available who can hit the ground running when you need to move onto a higher priority. As a result, the site's columns have been silent (I understand the forums are still active, though) and we haven't yet seen a major followup to Project: Girl Wonder. But that could change:

Girl-Wonder.org is pleased to announce that it is holding elections for the Board of Directors for its governing body, Gworg.

Gworg is an incorporated non-profit feminist organization dedicated to fostering an attentive, empowered comics fan community, to encouraging respect and high-quality character depiction, and to assisting the professional development of women working in the field of comics. Anyone who supports these aims is eligible to become a member, and all members are able to vote, stand for office, and nominate others to the Board.

Becoming a Director is an excellent opportunity to support and direct the progress of Girl-Wonder.org! Moreover, since Gworg is a registered non-profit organization, this also makes a great entry of volunteer work on your resume.

This is how it works:

1) To become an official member of Gworg, you must purchase a voting membership good for one year. There is a nominal fee of five dollars, which is waived for Girl-Wonder.org volunteers (bloggers, cartoonists, forums moderators, etc). All members are eligible to vote in elections, and to nominate themselves or others for Board positions.

2) If you want to be a Board Director, nominate yourself! You can also nominate others – don’t worry about approaching them to see if they’re interested or if they’re members, because we’ll do that.

3) We’ll make sure all nominees want to run for election and are eligible to do so.

We will be accepting new members and Board nominations from Tuesday, November 30th through Tuesday, December 21st. Elections will be announced on Tuesday, December 28th. Members will then have until Tuesday, January 4th to vote for this year’s Gworg Board of Directors.

Just a few years ago Girl-wonder.org was the most effective female-focused comics charity around, and with the right people on the board it could be again. If you have interest in superheroes, a progressive outlook, enough drive to confront a resistant industry about its ingrained attitudes towards women and spare time, I advise you to look into this. (Even if you're not into Batfandom, because heaven knows things like this need variety.)

I just have two things to say, at the risk of opening old wounds:

1) When you do join, choose your officers carefully. The old Board were the founders, so they were engaged. But there's another female-focused comics industry charity that once did a great deal of work but found itself slipping into inactivity. This charity attempted to infuse itself with new life by electing for their President a popular blogger with a prize peacock personality rather than a dedication to the goals of the organization. It did not work out well. Take my advice and pick yourselves some down-to-earth people who aren't into self-promotion for your leadership.

2) If you get a position but later find that your professional, student or personal life is reaching a point that you can't fulfill that duty, don't be ashamed to step down and let someone with more time take care of things. Both Kalinara and I hesitated on that with When Fangirls Attack and we had several months without a post, nearly killing our venture. We finally faced facts and passed it on, letting it survive a few more years. The projects themselves are more important than any discomfort that results from having to give them onto another person.

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